The Transfer Tavern

Pundit’s Choice: Mauricio Pochettino

Tottenham Hotspur are a club whom command plenty of interest in the British media and they’ve been dominating the headlines once again this week after suffering a third straight defeat.

It’s been a bitterly disappointing few weeks for Mauricio Pochettino since his side recorded an emphatic 3-0 victory over Manchester United at Old Trafford. The Argentine boss has gone from hero to zero in the blink of an eye and he now finds himself under pressure to dig his side out of a rut.

Set-pieces once again proved to be Tottenham’s Achilles’ heel in Milan as Matias Vecino’s last gasp winner arrived from a corner and the Lilywhites’ failure to deal with set-pieces is beginning to frustrate the supporters.

However, whilst it would be logical to focus on Tottenham’s questionable defending from dead ball situations, talkSPORT host Adrian Durham has directed his criticism towards Mauricio Pochettino for openly praising his players and making them believe their own hype.

Durham began a scathing attack on Pochettino by stating: “I’m looking at those players and I think they’ve been told too many times just how good they are and it’s gone to their heads and they’re not actually that good”.

Durham then went on to cite the likes of Davinson Sanchez, Harry Kane, Ben Davies and Mousa Dembele as players who are nowhere near the level which many believe they’re at.

Of Dembele he said: “Pochettino told him he was one of the best players in the world last season. Well, what a load of rubbish that is!”

Sure, perhaps Pochettino went overboard in his praise of Dembele but the style which the Tottenham chief has utilised in his career thus far has clearly had the desired effect.

Maybe the Spurs players aren’t quite as good as they’ve led people to believe, but why is that exactly?

Well, Pochettino’s style of dishing out high praise and making the players believe in themselves certainly has something to do with that, and 3 poor results shouldn’t detract from the wider picture of what he has managed to achieve with limited resources in comparison to Tottenham’s top-four rivals.

It’s easy to point the blame at the manager when results aren’t coming naturally, but without Pochettino it’s unlikely that this set of players would carry the huge expectation that rests on their shoulders following 3 years of over-achievement.

The manner in which Pochettino reacted to defeat against Watford proved that he is not afraid to openly lambaste his players when he feels they’ve let him down, so Durham should remind himself of what the Argentine is trying to achieve and that maybe his eagerness to lavish praise on his players has formed the backbone of his success thus far.